Finding a friend is more likely to mean horror than hope

The story of the disaster in Thailand this week has been one of terrible tragedy mixed with extraordinary compassion and, just occasionally, fortitude and incredible luck.

One middle-aged British doctor, Sally Ann, was trapped in her hotel room for three days after the tidal wave - yet has spent virtually every waking moment since helping out in a local hospital.

Sally Ann lives in northern Thailand, but when the tsunami struck she was on holiday with her son and a group of travelling companions at the Seagull, a hotel near Phuket.

Nick, a volunteer with the British Embassy, heard her story. He said: "She was swept away by the first wave and ended up on the roof. Then she went back to her third-floor room. When the big wave came through it lodged a truck over the window, making it impossible to escape. A minibus was across the door and the room was half full of water.

"They stayed there for three days. No one heard them, no one searched for them. At first they just couldn't get out of their room. When they finally did on Tuesday, they found looters ransacking the hotel. She chased them off with her son."

Since then Sally Ann has been working as a volunteer in Patong Hospital, carrying out medical procedures as well as helping identify the dead. "She is one hell of a gal," said a tough former US Army medic, also working as a volunteer. "When she says she'll do something, she does it." Last night she worked through the night - a shift that showed no sign of finishing even after 15 hours. "I'm knackered," she said. And carried on working.

The Evening Standard had been due to interview Sally Ann this morning but shortly beforehand she received a terrible blow. "I've just found six of my group," she said. "I'm in shock."

In Thailand, just as with every country affected by the disaster, "finding" people these days means one thing: identifying dead bodies, the disfigured and decomposed remains of friends, loved ones, family. And no one - not the volunteers, not the survivors - remains unscathed.

The Phuket area has no shortage of dead bodies: they are laid out in long rows, hundreds at a time, in the temples of Khao Lak, the most sorely stricken stretch of coastline. There is no shortage of missing people, either: posters bearing names and pictures fill every free inch of wall at the city hall.

The flyers - handwritten, computer printed, anything so long as it has a picture and a contact number - talk with desperate optimism about the missing. Jan Teigland and his two daughters Camilla and Nathalie: pretty blonde teenagers whose faces smile out

from the poster, last seen in Blue Village. Silvia Ostermeier from Germany, who has a tattoo of a witch on her leg - missing.

Too often the posters are for missing children: "Two and a half year old boy missing. Please help us find little Ragnar!" People stare with forlorn curiosity, and move on.

On one wall the living share space with the dead. One moment one is looking at pictures of smiling twentysomethings - young people snapped by their mates at parties and pubs - the next at pictures of corpses washed up by the sea.

Some are so horribly mutilated it is hard to see how anyone could ever identify them, others look quietly asleep. A small child, no more than 12 months old, is pictured in its nappy; perhaps someone will be able to identify it from that.

For a while Svetlana thought of her husband as missing. She is a 27-year-old from Cologne whose husband Juri, 28, an engineer, disappeared after the flood, and for the first few days went round all the hospitals looking for him. Then she found a fortitude few others have, and started looking among the dead.

"She just went body to body," said Mary Doerflein, 52, an American psychology professor living in Phuket who befriended her. "At first she went from hospital to hospital - and then, when she finally got the courage, she went round the temples. "She is very tenacious, a very devoted Catholic. She wanted to bring him back and bury him in holy ground in Germany. I kept running into her. Tears would be running down her beautiful face.

"I am a widow myself. I can imagine how frightened these young people must be. She was in shock at first, then panic. Then just dazed, just dazed. She does not speak English, but eventually a few words of English came out: 'I love my man. I have to find my man.'"

Juri's body spent its last night in Thailand in a coffin in the back of Mrs Doerflein's pick-up truck in a church courtyard because there was nowhere else to keep it once it had been claimed.

"It is in my truck because that is the only way we could get it from the beach in Phang Nga province. Thai Airways said we could not leave the body at the airport overnight, and the hospital said the morgues were full. I called my priest and he said, 'Of course we will help this young woman and respect her husband.'

"It is faith. She is a really devout Catholic. She explained it to us: 'I have to do this. I have to bring him home. He has to be buried in a Catholic cemetery.'"

IT IS only really possible to comprehend what Svetlana had to do to find her husband when one has seen what passes for a temporary morgue in Thailand this week. In Khao Lak four temples have been converted into makeshift resting places for the dead.

They are easy to spot: the sickly smell of rotting bodies pervades the air all around, and the teams of rescue workers, volunteers and forensic experts wear masks to keep the worst of it out. A smear of tiger balm under the nose helps, too.

Some of the bodies are in bags now, trussed up in plastic and tied with twine and not really looking like a human body at all. Only occasionally does a hand poke out of the bag and show the truth.

Further down the line are the bodies they have not got around to dealing with yet: naked, bloated, not a sight anyone should have to look at for long. Chickens wander among the long rows of corpses, a dog gnaws at a dead man's foot. No one paid it any attention.

It was down these lines that Svetlana had to walk, checking each in turn to see if it was the body of the man she loved. As she said, "I have to find my man."